Marx's Workers' Inquiry with Kenny Novis and Clark McAllister

Karl Marx’s 1880 ‘workers’ inquiry’ was a survey written by him and sent to workers across France to aid in understanding the nature of capitalist production in the country at the time, and to encourage workers to reflect on the conditions of their own labour. While this survey has usually been regarded as an abject failure, Clark McAllister in his new book ‘Karl Marx’s Workers’ Inquiry: International History, Reception, and Responses’, published by Notes from Below, provides important insights into its successes both in its own time and as a strategy for contemporary anticapitalist organising.

In this interview, Clark McAllister, a PhD student in Sociology at the Open University specialising in workers’ inquiry and an associate of the Notes from Below collective, discusses with Kenneth Novis the history of Marx’s inquiry, as well as recent developments in Marxist sociology around controversial figures in the Italian left like Antonio Negri and Mario Tronti.

Clark’s book can be downloaded for free or bought through the following link

Are you a worker who would like to be involved in a current workers’ inquiry initiative? Notes from Below are running a survey, hoping to gather responses from workers across the UK to understand how the sale of labour power and the extraction of surplus value from workers function in the world today. A link to their survey can be found here

Clark is also a member of Pagliacci Rossi, a workerist study group situated in London. Their website can be found in the following

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